The news is distressing — one of Burlington’s most prominent club DJs, DJ A-Dog, is battling leukemia. The nice thing is, though, based on my recent phone conversation with A-Dog, he doesn’t sound distressed.

“I’m approaching it like I do everything else. I go after it with all the resources I can,” he told me New Year’s Eve afternoon from his hospital room at Fletcher Allen Health Care, where he began chemotherapy treatments Dec. 20. “I definitely have a good support system. It’s definitely all the love of the people of Burlington.”

A-Dog, whose birth name is Andy Williams, is feeling that love through a couple of fundraising efforts. His friend, Hannah Deene Wood, and girlfriend, Josie Furchgott Sourdiffe, are leading a fundraising effort on the website Inlu. Fellow DJs in town are planning a benefit show for Thursday at Club Metronome.

The fundraisers are necessary, Furchgott Sourdiffe told me, for the same reasons they always are for musicians — they rarely have health insurance, and they don’t get paid when they can’t work. A-Dog, who’s 37, said he’ll be in the hospital for another month or so, and he’ll need outpatient treatment after that.

A Franklin County native and a fixture at the Church Street night spot Red Square, A-Dog said his mother died earlier this year, and when he felt tired and unmotivated in mid-November he began to wonder if he was feeling depression or stress from her death. He felt winded and could feel his heart pounding and the blood pulsing in his head and eardrums.

He went to a health clinic and, after a blood test, learned Dec. 18 that he had leukemia. He entered FAHC the next day and began treatment the day after that. Doctors have told him his leukemia was diagnosed at an early stage.

A-Dog, who began working as a DJ in Burlington about a decade ago, sounded strong when I talked to him New Year’s Eve, and he said he hasn’t felt any of the nausea common after chemotherapy. Some of that strength might be coming from the community as it rallies to help him.